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| “ | You dare to challenge me? You're not warriors. You're PIGS! | „ |
| ~ Queen Bavmorda, mocking her foes before cursing them. |
| “ | Now you will watch ME draw upon the power of the universe to send that child into the NETHERWORLD. NOW PLACE IT ON THE ALTAR! | „ |
| ~ Queen Bavmorda, ordering Willow. |
Queen Bavmorda is the main antagonist of the 1988 fantasy adventure film Willow, its adaptations in novels, comic-books and video-games as well as being the overarching antagonist of its Disney+ sequel television series of the same name.
She is an immensely powerful sorceress and the despotic monarch of the country of Nockmaar, bent on conquering the world of Andowyne, whose efforts to kill the baby fated to end her rule leads to her demise.
She was portrayed by Jean Marsh, who also played Nurse Wilson and Princess Mombi in Return to Oz.
Appearance
Queen Bavmorda is a tall woman in her fifties, of regal features and support, clad in elaborate dark blue robes (black in the final battle) and cloaks. She wears a white head-scarf and a crown ornate with thorn-like spikes. Though she fits the archetype of the wicked witch like a glove, her aspect is made to evoke a nun.
Personality
The novelization and TV sequel explain that in her youth, Bavmorda used to be a promising apprentice, eager to please and avid to learn. Still, she was governed by her passion, displaying creepy fascination with what her power enabled her to, coupled with callous disregard for every life other than her own. Such a seed of corruption would worsen tenfold the more she learnt Dark Magic.
Queen Bavmorda is cruel, merciless, relentless, arrogant, scornful, demanding, irascible and hateful, who covets absolute dominion. She is collected, regal and cautious, dealing tactically with problems, but reacts badly to setbacks, hitting her right-hand-man for bringing bad news. She strongly scorns and outright mocks her foes, including her rival Fin Raziel who matches her power. She is sadistic, preferring to watch her foes despair rather than killing them. While she mostly retains her focus when angered, she loses all self-control when the situation goes unpredicted or out of control, leading to her demise.
Although she verbally abuses her daughter Sorsha, there are hints in her behaviour that she trusts her more than any of her servants. She refuses to heed a warning that Sorsha could turn against her, and appears pained when she sees her among her foes. However, this enrages her and she resolves to punish this with death.
Powers and Abilities
Queen Bavmorda is easily the greatest mortal spell-caster alive, being an exceptionally powerful and skilled sorceress, only matched by her archenemy Fin Raziel. The sourcebook explains that she is able to perform anything that sorcery enables, grasp any form of magic, and cast every sort of spell with minimal strain.
She can use telekinesis on things and people, levitate, compel or control people and warp or erase memories, animate or transform any object into a sapient being, control the weather to cause thunderstorms, or reshape entire landscapes, among other impressive feats. She can effortlessly curse hundreds of people with a single spell, as with Tir Asleen or the Galladoorn army, and bewitch objects and elements to curse people at contact, as with the cursed lake. Her transformations break her victims' own powers, as with Fin Raziel. She can breed deadly dog-monsters, among other horrors, and commands monsters of all sorts. The sourcebook even states that she can conjure things and even beings out of thin air.
In the final battle, while being weary from her ritual, Bavmorda dominates Sorsha and Fin Raziel, despite the latter wielding a powerful wand. (Granted, they faced her alone, and Raziel was weakened by old age.) She can seize flames to hurl fireballs setting foes ablaze (throwing them normally in the novelization); hurl lightning bolts blasting stone walls, and powerful shockwaves of pure force all around her.
Moreover, she is resilient to magic, negating powerful spells and transformations, such as being able to reverse the petrifying effect of an acorn that was thrown by Willow. Finally, she remains very physically fit, brawling fiercely against Fin Raziel.
Biography
Background
The novelization and the Willow Sourcebook describe the evil queen's past and rise to power. When she was born, in the kingdom of Tir Asleen, many omens indicated an exceptional potential for sorcery. She was even able to float before she could walk. Thus, many powerful mages, including the Fairy Queen Cherlindrea, initiated her along Fin Raziel, an older sorceress-in-training, to the ways of the Great Mystery (how sorcery is called by its practitioners).
At first, Bavmorda and Fin Raziel shared a cordial relationship. However, she disquieted her comrade by turning a flinch bird into glass, explaining that she only restored it to normal because she felt like it. Her increasing ambition eventually made the Malatrium (a sentient grimoire containing the secrets of the Darkest Arts, attracted by evil mages) appear for her to find. Having coveted it for a long time, Bavmorda eagerly took it. Shortly after, she was abducted by the Crone, leader of the Order of the Wyrm, who further corrupted her and taught her forbidden magic.
One year later, Bavmorda returned, now named Harbinger of the Wyrm, although she put her own ambition first. Having completed her study of the Malatrium, she magically seduced Prince Mikal Tanthalos, who was engaged to Fin Raziel. Shortly after marrying him, she caused the deaths of the elderly king and queen, then of the court poet Durward after he voiced his suspicion of her. When Fin Raziel confronted her old rival, Bavmorda defeated her in a duel of sorcery, turning her into a possum and banishing her to a remote island on a lake, which she cursed so that anyone in contact with its water would transform into a monstrous fish.
Following the birth of her daughter Sorsha, she cast a spell on the entire capital of Tir Asleen, encasing everyone in crystal, including the husband she no longer needed; before turning the valley around Tir Asleen into a nigh-impenetrable labyrinth-like array of canyons which she swarmed with trolls and monsters. She had the formidable Nockmaar Castle built within the namesake Nockmaar Valley, to serve as her capital, starting her reign of terror, known in history as the Time of Whispers.
For decades, Bavmorda tyrannized her subjects with heavy taxes, curfews, slave labour, public executions and torture. She then raised an immense army of 15000 men and launched her campaign to attain total dominion over the world of Andowyne, conquering and laying waste on bordering kingdoms, like Carathor and Galladoorn.
Yet, Bavmorda fears a certain prophecy proclaiming that a new-born baby will be the cause of her eventual downfall. As such, she has all pregnant women in her empire imprisoned in her dungeon, in order to get rid of the prophesized child as soon as it was born.
The Baby's Escape
When the prophesised child, a baby girl, is born, the midwife who delivered her is able to escape with her, before Bavmorda can perform a vile ceremony known as the that would not only kill her, but banish her soul in the netherworld for eternity, unable to reincarnate. Bavmorda orders Princess Sorsha and General Kael, to capture back the child at all cost. After a long chase, just before the midwife is torn apart by hounds of Nockmaar, she puts the baby in a raft she sends down-stream – hoping to send her away to safety.
The baby is found by the main hero, Willow Ufgood: a farmer and aspiring sorcerer from the Nelwyn people (dwarf-like humanoids). After the Nelwyns kill a hound of Nockmaar that had tracked the baby, Willow is tasked to bring her to the Daikinis (humans) who could take care of her. The village's sorcerer, seeing Willow's potential, gives him petrifying magical acorns. Upon fleeing Bavmorda's forces, Willow later encounters the rogue and boastful swordsman Madmartigan, who was left to die in a hanging cage. Despite a rocky first contact, the two grow to trust each other.
In the Fairy Kingdom
After a long journey, Willow enters the fairies realm, where the Fairy Queen Cherlindrea tells him that the baby, who is called Elora Danan, is destined to end Bavmorda's reign of terror and has anointed Willow to be her guardian. Cherlindrea gives him her magic wand and directs him to the island where he would meet the good sorceress Fin Raziel, ordering two brownies named Franjean and Rool to escort him.
They meet again with Madmartigan, with whom they escape from Sorsha and her goons. (In a deleted scene, Willow meets a teenager magically compelled into throwing himself in the cursed lake around Fin Raziel's island and turned into a monster fish, having to petrify it with a magic acorn.) The heroes find Fin Raziel at last, but Willow lacks confidence and his attempts at sorcery only result in her turning first into a crow, then into a white goat. Eager for revenge, Fin Raziel follows Willow and starts teaching him magic. Immediately after, they get caught by Sorsha.
The brownies pick the lock of their cage, but Madmartigan is accidentally subjected to a magical dust that makes him fall in love with Sorsha. The heroes capture Sorsha and escape, and she and Madmartigan grow genuinely attracted to one another. But she escapes as they reach Tir Asleen. Worse, no-one can help them there due to Bavmorda's crystal curse, forcing Madmartigan to improvise defences and traps with the weapons they find. (In a deleted scene and the novelization, Sorsha meets her father in Tir Asleen, kept in suspended animation by Bavmorda's curse. She realizes that her mother erased her memories of him and told her he was dead, cementing her defection to the heroes' side.)
Battle of Tir Asleen
Sorsha, Kael and Bavmorda's army attack them - and Willow botches a spell, turning the troll he was fighting into a nightmarish, gigantic, two-headed dragon called the Eborsisk. Fortunately, Airk and the survivors of Galladoorn army arrive just in time, starting a battle against Bavmorda's forces, and the Eborsisk attacking anyone.
Impressed by Madmartigan's skills with a sword, Sorsha develops feelings for him, to the point of joining sides with the heroes. Alas, General Kael steals Elora Danan from Willow and returns to Nockmaar, dispatching any soldier on his way.
The heroes' forces then journey up to Nockmaar - in a final attempt to rescue Elora Danan before Bavmorda can send her soul to the netherworld. As they set their camp close to the castle walls, Bavmorda and her druid assistants come out onto the castle battlements and witness their arrival.
Storming Nockmaar Castle
Queen Bavmorda deriding her foes' armies as she turns them into pigs.
Bavmorda laughs derisively at the heroes, prompting Fin Raziel to call Willow away into a nearby tent, telling him to chant a spell to protect himself from the curse she knows will soon follow. Bavmorda transforms their entire army into pigs; distraught and disgusted upon seeing her daughter among them, she curses her as well.
Willow finally manages to turn Fin Raziel back to normal, and in turn, she restores their allies to their human form. But while she protects them from Bavmorda's magic, Nockmaar Castle remains impenetrable, so Willow comes with a desperate plan. He has the soldiers hide and makes it look like they left, while he and Fin Raziel call out for Bavmorda's forces to surrender. General Kael sends a few soldiers to deal with them, but the hiding army takes profit of the open drawbridge to storm the castle. In the midst of the ensuing battle, General Kael kills Airk, before getting killed in turn by a vengeful Madmartigan. Meanwhile, Sorsha, Fin and Willow sneak off to climb the keep and confront Bavmorda.
The Final Battle
| “ | Is *that* the extent of your power, little one? | „ |
| ~ Queen Bavmorda taunting Willow. |
The heroes enter the ceremonial room, where Bavmorda is about to complete the Ritual of Obliteration. Sorsha effortlessly defeats her mother's druids assistants, but the queen levitates her and nearly impales her on some spikes sticking out from the wall, only saved by Fin Raziel.
The two sorceresses engage a rematch. Bavmorda throws a fireball at Raziel, who resists and retaliates with a freezing spell, using Cherlindrea's wand. Yet, Bavmorda counters it and the resulting shockwave very nearly crushes Raziel under rubbles. Raziel levitates Bavmorda and throws her to the floor. But Bavmorda survives the fall and causes Raziel to drop her wand. As the two sorceresses struggle to pry the wand away from one another, Raziel repeatedly punching Bavmorda in the face, they fire magical bolts from it - wrecking the room and turning a cauldron into a four-legged creature blocking Willow's path, as he tries to rescue Elora Danan.
Willow throws the cauldron-creature out of the window, while Bavmorda overpowers Raziel and strangles her to unconsciousness. Willow tries to run away with Elora, but Bavmorda notices him and magically seals the doors before him. She demands that he hand the baby over to her, but he states his name and tells her that he is a great sorcerer, "Greater than Fin Raziel, greater than her even", to which she merely laughs. Willow throws a magical acorn at her, which she catches, but she dispels its petrifying effect and orders him to place Elora on the altar. Willow refuses, calling her a stupid hag to her face and claiming that he will send Elora into a realm where "evil cannot touch her", before chanting a spell.
Queen Bavmorda's demise from her own Ritual of Obliteration.
Livid, Bavmorda conjures Cherlindrea's wand to her hand, but Willow performs a parlour trick to make it seem that he has made Elora vanish (his chanting was but a pretence). Shocked, the evil queen loses all composure and lunges at him in a frantic rage, accidently knocking magic items on the altar all over herself.
As she raises the wand to destroy Willow, who suffers her magic's backlash, it attracts lightning on her and activates the Ritual of Obliteration. Having botched it by knocking the items, Bavmorda is destroyed by the very magic she intended to use against Elora Danan, and her soul is cast into the netherworld for eternity.
Aftermath
Now a celebrated hero, Willow leaves Elora Danan in the care of Madmartigan and Sorsha, and returns home with a magic grimoire gifted by Fin Raziel, who tells him that with it he will become the great sorcerer he always wanted to be.
Decades later during the TV sequel series, Willow, now an ageing archmage and the sorcerer of the Nelwyns guides Sorsha's and Madmartigan's children and an adult Elora Danan, nicknamed Dove, teaching her magic. Together, they face the Crone and the Order of the Wyrm, still alive and as dangerous as ever.
Other Media
Video games
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Queen Bavmorda in Capcom's video game adaptation of Willow, being in SNES (top) and NES (bottom).
Queen Bavmorda serves as the final boss in the video game adaptations of Willow. The first is a platform game released by Capcom for arcades, and the second is an Action RPG released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989. The third is a point-and-click with mini-games and riddles, released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS in 1998, developed by MidNite Entertainment Group Inc and Brian A. Rice Inc and published by Mindscape.
In the Capcom game, Queen Bavmorda hurls a wave of magic sparks, one after another. She can block Willow's energy balls with a magic screen, but she is vulnerable when she attacks. When damaged enough, she starts flying around the room and destroys the chandeliers with a lightning bolt to set the ground aflame, before hurling exploding energy balls. Willow must jump to attack her.
The second time Bavmorda starts flying, her lightning bolt animates the cauldron-creature, which starts jumping around and opening itself to fire three marble-like projectiles on each side. Willow must dodge it and concentrate on Bavmorda. The evil queen has a huge life-bar, so it is best to face her with the maximum power-ups and to attack without end.
Gallery
Images
 Villains
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Army of Nockmaar Order of the Wyrm Trolls Others | ||